St. Landry democrat., 1887-12-31

| It looked to strangers as if the little shoes
had been mating seeds to terminate III the
ashes of the widow Arnold, or dye the scar
| let berries with their stains of friyolity and
| of tears.
Hettv Arnold appeared at Brownsville
school that winter tall girl, straight as
! flesh and bone could grow, and comely, too,
with roses in her cheeks and large blue eyes,
She was distant without being humorous,
and soon had the scholars understand that
she made no condolences and studied with
purpose above competition. 1t took but q
little while for low curiosity that would pry
into her mind and hermitage to draw away
dismayed by something like character and
intellect, if the latter could be understood in
that humble society. where the annual
washing of feet, in imitation CT the les
son in St. John, was the one fete day OF
existence.
Hetty Arnold became an example of mod
esty and self-reliance, Of neatness and Of
method. She controlled the bound boy left
by her mother until the great civil war drop
ped its tirebrands into Pleasant alley, and
then the boy enlisted and left her exposed
to more dangers than other women could
feel who were surrounded by family or vii
lage protection.
At the time she was full-grOwn woman,
though but seventeen years of age, and no
man could see her without looking back to
enjoy her image again. She felt instinctively
that her beauty and maturity were perllous
amidst the lawless beings who strayed
from the ranks on either side and lurked
along the mountain and built their fires in
its rocks and brush to roast the stolen fowl
or calf.
1t became necessary for her to close her
cabin at times and steal to the cover Of the
laurel brush or hide in the dry ravines where
the nesting birds felt no fear of her, but
twittered low as if they knew it was only
Hetty Red Shoes the child of nature.
Yet things about that dread war had q
powerful fascination over this lonely wo-
man, who was now filled with woman's
thoughts and with the germs of love,
though unacquainted with any equal of the
other sex.
She saw the explosion at Harper's Ferry
when the little garrison blew up the armories,
and the red volcano and flames, at the
point of the opposite mountain, tinted her
awe struck face with something like exul-
tation.
The red ensigns and regimental flags trail
ing through the soft gray valleys, the red
pennons of lancers and the red stripes of the
artillery, the red badges Of the corps, the red
regalia of the zouaves, the red drums rolling
in the red sunrise for the reUeille the red
striped flag raised over the corral for govern
ment horses near Brownsville, floating against
the cleft of Solomon's Gap-all touched that
chord in her nature which began with her
baby feet in their red morocco shoes and
passing thence to her heart and brain in
sorry and outlawry, made the red blood as
it flowed along her system seem like visi-
BILE fluid to her inner sight.
She read her Bible and learned that the
blood was the life, that the symbol of faith
was the blood of the lamb, that blood was
the sacrifice of every great occasion, and that
glory was only the fulfllmeut of bloodshed.
Red was my mothers SIM" said Hetty,
closing the book. "She only sinned in a
color. There is something red in my super
stitions. Some redness is going to hap
pen to me. I feel that my deliverance and
career are some way to be connected with
what is red, and that by red, also, am to
lose my lou."
She blushed. although she knew no man.